


the writing’s on the wall [she said, she said, she said, “why don’t you just drop dead?”]

by postcardmystery



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 09:31:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardmystery/pseuds/postcardmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson began to write the novels because he couldn't do anything else.</p><p>He needed to share Sherlock Holmes with someone, anyone, and so he chose to share him with his adoring public, for whom Sherlock Holmes was a myth, the demon-hunter with the mind like a grenade and the tongue like a knife.</p><p>A steampunk ghostbusters AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the writing’s on the wall [she said, she said, she said, “why don’t you just drop dead?”]

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for death and violence.

The gun is always warm in his hands, warm the way his body never is.  
  
It’s the only thing that ever sends any heat tearing through his veins.  
  
Well.  
  
Except for Watson’s smile.  
  
  
  
  
“You wouldn’t want to live with him,” Stamford had said, “no one does.”  
  
“Try me,” said Watson, and it was too sharp, his teeth bared, to really call what he did a grin.  
  
“He’ll be in the lab,” Stamford had said, “doesn’t sleep, you know.”  
  
Later, Watson will remember that last remark, and think,  _telling, that_.  
  
  
  
  
Watson has seen a lot of battles in his time, and seen a lot of men die.  
  
This is different.  
  
He’d had a lot of men go limp in his arms, breath gone, but he’d never had to deal with what came after.  
  
He wonders sometimes, how many of those men stood beside him, trapped, while he did nothing.  
  
How many waited while he buried them.  
  
How many are still waiting for a release that’ll never come.  
  
Holmes always says,  _do the job that’s in front of you, and never look back_.  
  
But Watson can’t help it. He never has.  
  
  
  
  
“Afghanistan, yeah?” Holmes had said, barely looking up from the soldering iron he held precariously above some smoking, brass,  _thing.  
_  
“Stamford said you’d do that,” said Watson, fingers tap-tap-tapping on the counter.  
  
“Did he now?” Holmes had said, “And don’t do that, it wreaks havoc with my concentration.”  
  
“Apparently no one wants to live with you,” Watson had said, and Holmes stilled, put the iron down.  
  
“That, unfortunately, is a fact I cannot refute,” Holmes had said, “except I suspect that I can now, Dr Watson, can I not?”  
  
Watson hadn’t said anything, and Holmes said, “Put your number in my phone, and I’ll see you tonight.”  
  
“I was hoping this afternoon--“ Watson had started, and Holmes cut him off with a curt shake of the head.  
  
“No, night or nothing. I only go out when the bad things do, dear Doctor.”  
  
He smiled at Watson, then, sharp and bright, and Watson caught himself thinking,  _too many teeth_ , and then it was over.  
  
“The witching hour, then,” said Watson, “although I was never very clear when that was.”  
  
“Eleven will do,” Holmes had said, and turned back to whatever smouldered beneath him.  
  
  
  
  
Often, when Watson can’t sleep at night, he’ll go down into the living room, watch Holmes play the violin, frantically, like he’s a drowning man and the music will save him.  
  
He makes the mistake of saying that to Holmes, once, and only once.  
  
Holmes looks away, laughing but eyes crinkling at the edges in an entirely wrong and different way, and says, “Don’t be stupid, Watson. It’s entirely too late for that.”  
  
  
  
  
The flat at Baker Street was dark and musty, with shadows stretching from every corner.  
  
“Black as the frozen chambers of my heart,” Holmes had said dramatically, wry smile in place, as he flopped down on the couch, swinging up his legs and his eyes never leaving Watson’s face.  
  
“It smells like rat piss in here,” said Watson, nose wrinkling, but he knew it was all theatrics. There was no way he was going to say no.  
  
“There’s no way you’re going to say no,” Holmes had said, arm dangling towards the carpet, hand languid, pale, Holmes all-too-aware that Watson just couldn’t stop _looking_.  
  
Watson had just raised an eyebrow and went to tell Mrs Hudson they’d take it.  
  
  
  
  
“You have to be fast,” Holmes says, “because they can always be faster.”  
  
Watson, the first time he’d said that, pointed to his leg, battle-scarred and only sometimes useful, and Holmes shook his head fervently, like there was something really obvious that Watson was missing.  
  
“I wasn’t talking about that,” said Holmes, “nothing so paltry as the flesh, Watson.”  
  
It’s a long time before Watson realises what he means, and then he wonders how he couldn’t see it all along.  
  
  
  
  
“Don’t you ever eat?” Watson had asked, coming downstairs for the eighth day in a row to find Holmes already dressed and doing, well,  _something_ , but Watson was buggered if he knew what.  
  
“Don’t eat when I’m working,” Holmes had said, eyes never moving from the page in front of him.  
  
“But you’re  _always_  working,” Watson said.  
  
“Therein lies the riddle, darling,” Holmes had said, with a huff of laughter, as if there was a joke only he was getting.  
  
Watson only learns later that there was.  
  
  
  
  
Watson’s the better shot and they both know it.  
  
Holmes might be brilliant as fuck but there some things only military training can teach you.  
  
It works out for the best in the end, because Holmes is a hell of a lot better with the ones that need some  _persuading_  to get where they need to go.  
  
Holmes is never gentle, but that’s why Watson likes him so much.  
  
He’s rough with everyone, but he’s never rough the way he is with his doctor.  
  
  
  
  
“Okay, I’m a patient man and everything, but seriously, what the hell do you do, Holmes?”  
  
Holmes had let the knife – what do you call that? an athame? – slip from his fingers, flicked a glance towards Watson and said, “I’m curious to know what broke you, my love. Was it the blood in the fridge? The pentagram on the ceiling? The hand of glory in the cupboard under the stairs? Or the fact that you've been here a month and I haven't slept for even ten minutes?”  
  
“Actually,” Watson said, “it was whatever the fuck you wrote on me when I was asleep, is this Latin--?”  
  
“The  _vade retro satana_ , yes, very effective, and very old. I honestly didn’t think you’d notice.”  
  
“It’s in permanent marker! On my collarbone! How did you even  _manage_  that--"  
  
Holmes had thrown back his head and laughed, and Watson had turned a particularly unattractive shade of purple until he’d finally managed to force out, “So. What is it? Are you some kind of witch-doctor?”  
  
Holmes had stopped laughing abruptly, eyes narrowing, said, “Why, Watson. Nothing so crude. I am a demon hunter of sorts, although many things fall under my purview.”  
  
Watson had gaped at him, said, “You’re not joking, are you? Oh, God, you’re not joking. I have finally managed to move in with a serial killer. My brother said it’d happen, and it did.”  
  
Holmes had begun to laugh at that, and said, “Well, if you fears need to be assuaged, how about a demonstration?”  
  
  
  
  
“Why me?” Watson says one grey morning, traffic just beginning to flow outside, an endless cacophony of horns.  
  
“Don’t make me say it,” Holmes says, “it sounds like the sort of romantic drivel that you come up with on a daily basis.”  
  
“Now you  _have_  to tell me.”  
  
Holmes sighs, smoke drifting from the cigarette he holds between his fingers, says, “Your eyes. You have very old eyes. Ancient, almost.”  
  
Watson doesn’t look at him, trails his fingertips down the glass, says, “Not as old as yours.”  
  
Holmes takes a drag that he doesn’t inhale, says, “No. But then, they never are.”  
  
  
  
  
When the blue fire died down, Watson had turned to Holmes and said, “That was bloody impressive, I’ll give you that, but I read about a hand of glory once, and I want to know what the  _fuck_  that’s doing in our airing cupboard.”  
  
Holmes had laughed until he fell over, and when he was done kissed Watson sloppily on the cheek, whispered in his ear, “You are magnificent, John. You are the most amazing thing I have ever seen, really, you are. I can hardly believe you’re real at all.”  
  
Watson guessed even then that coming from Holmes, this really meant something.  
  
  
  
  
“Don’t worry, I never know what he’s thinking, either,” Lestrade says, as Holmes hangs from the ceiling, magnifying glass in hand, looking for something only be can find.  
  
Watson pats Lestrade on the back, says, “He’ll tell us. We still won’t understand, but he’ll tell us. That’s what he does.”  
  
Holmes dangles precariously, the scarf wrapped around his fingers, slender and much too pale, and jerks his head to Lestrade.  
  
When Lestrade turns away to talk to his officers, Holmes catches Watson’s eye and licks a long stripe up his index finger.  
  
Lestrade, oblivious to the flush on Watson’s cheeks, returns, says, “Coming, Doctor?”  
  
Watson gestures frantically at Holmes for him to behave himself, and Holmes merely winks.  
  
  
  
  
“This is what you have to wear, if you enjoy not having your insides on your outsides,” Holmes had said, lifting the leather, strapping it across Watson’s chest.  
  
He already wore it, whatever you called it, brown leather, his body covered in buckles and straps, something large and rectangular strapped to his back.  
  
“Body armour,” Holmes had said, to Watson’s questioning gaze, “of my own creation. The proton pack is the most important piece of equipment, of course.”  
  
He pulled his goggles down, eyes unreadable behind the lenses, and gave a smirk that Watson, if he’d had the presence of mind, would’ve called ‘challenging’.  
  
“Well, let’s see how good a shot you are, then.”  
  
  
  
  
“This is really rather primitive,” Holmes says, “but sometimes this comforts them, makes them come out more easily than incantations and sheer naked power.”  
  
He raises his eyebrow on ‘naked’ and Watson snorts indelicately.  
  
Holmes pushes the planchette across the board, says, “We haven’t got all day, you know. Could you honour us with your presence?”  
  
 _ **N O**_ , spells out the board.  
  
“Bugger,” Holmes mutters, and Watson says, “Maybe you should try asking nicely.”  
  
“Bite me,” says Holmes, and Watson, laughing, says, “Already did.”  
  
The silence is uncomfortable, because they both know that isn’t true, that no matter how much he wants to, he never can.  
  
Any marks Watson could make on Holmes would never heal.  
  
“Right,” Holmes says eventually, “you’ve got until the count of ten, and then I start using holy water.”  
  
He moves his hands over the board slowly, and doesn’t try to catch Watson’s eye.  
  
Watson is so terribly grateful.  
  
  
  
  
“Bloody hell,” Holmes had said, “why on earth didn’t you tell me that you’re a crack shot?”  
  
“I thought that’s one of the many things that you could work out about me,” Watson said, “why would I need to tell you?”  
  
“Just because,” Holmes had said, “I can tell where you’ve been for the past week by the mud on your shoes and that you carried out military service by the way you hold your shoulders and that you are sexually attracted to men by the way your fingers brush your ear, does  _not_  mean I know everything there is to know about you, John Watson.”  
  
Watson giggled at that, voice a little too high, said, “Only by the way I brush my ear?”  
  
Holmes had looked steadily at the floor, then up, expression more intense than Watson had ever seen it, and had said, “Not only that, no.”  
  
“Checkmate,” Watson had whispered, and started to push his hands up Holmes’ shirt, fingers reaching around the straps, pressing into Holmes' oh-so-cold skin, but Holmes had said, softly, “No.”  
  
“No?” Watson said, truly questioning, looking for the line, where he had crossed it, because with Holmes it was so very hard to know.  
  
“I mean,” Holmes had said, “not no. Just not yet. There is information of which you remain unaware.”  
  
“I don’t care,” Watson said, realising as he said it that he meant it.  
  
Holmes had looked at him then, and his eyes were so sad it made something ache in Watson’s stomach.  
  
“You will,” he’d said, with great finality.  
  
  
  
  
“I love your hands,” Watson says one afternoon, without prompting.  
  
They’ve been going through books for hours, something still just out of their reach.  
  
“I know,” Holmes says levelly, not even looking up from the page.  
  
“What?” says Watson, and it’s not really a question, except for how it is, for all he wants to know.  
  
“Every time my fingers touch your wrist, your heart rate increases by 20%,” Holmes says, scrawling something legible only to himself on his arm.  
  
“Maybe I just like it when you touch me,” Watson says, aiming for ‘cheeky’ and missing.  
  
“Indubitably,” Holmes says smugly, “but you always come fastest when I use my hands.”  
  
Watson pauses, says, “I really hate you sometimes, you know.”  
  
Holmes nods, uncaring, because he knows how much Watson doesn’t.  
  
  
  
  
Holmes hadn’t told him then, in the room where their desires swirled around each other like ever-present dust, both of them lost, both of them  _wantingwantingwanting_.  
  
In fact, he didn’t have to.  
  
Their first job together, Holmes had been run straight through with an iron pipe. The impact was so hard that Watson had felt it in his teeth.   
  
He already knew without checking that Holmes was a dead man.  
  
He’d never been so right.  
  
Holmes had stood up, ripped the pipe back out, and used it as a melee weapon.  
  
“You see?” was all he had said, and lifted up his shirt to reveal his chest.  
  
Watson will always remember how there was absolutely no blood at all.  
  
  
  
  
Sometimes, when Watson wakes up, Holmes is stood beside his bed, watching him sleep.  
  
It doesn’t bother him anymore, if it ever did.  
  
He always pulls him down, says, “Stay with me.”  
  
Holmes always does, never says a word.  
  
Neither does Watson, but he knows why Holmes is there.  
  
Watching is almost the same, soothing, even if it’s never quite good enough.  
  
  
  
  
“What are you?” Watson had said, and marvelled that he wasn’t afraid, not really. Not when he stopped to think about it. It was still Holmes, and Holmes had always been  _other_.  
  
“There are lots of words,” Holmes said, “none of them really mean anything. Dybbuk. Wiedergänger. The most accurate and my personal favourite: revenant.”  
  
“Are you,” Watson had started, “are you, well, dead?”  
  
“Yes,” Holmes had said, “no. Everything in between.”  
  
“Right,” Watson, had said, “of course.”  
  
“It’s perfectly understandable if you’re upset,” Holmes had said, maddeningly reasonable.  
  
“Upset?” Watson let out a long breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding, “My flatmate’s a  _dead man_ , I think I might be a bit more than  _upset_!”  
  
“You’ll be wanting to move out, of course,” Holmes had said, “given the circumstances, it’s only fair.”  
  
Watson froze, ran a hand through his hair, said, “No. I didn’t say that. I want some questions answered, but I’m not doing that.”  
  
“But,” Holmes had said, at a loss, and wasn’t  _that_  a pretty picture, “Watson, I don’t have a fucking heartbeat, are you  _deranged_?”  
  
Watson chuckled, said, “Probably. So, is that what your problem’s been? Dead men can’t fuck?”  
  
Watson had never wished for a camera more in that moment, even if he found out later that it couldn’t capture photos of Holmes even if he’d had.  
  
  
  
  
"Are you sure?" asks Lestrade, "Arsenic? Really? That seems a bit...?"

"Archaic?" Holmes says, distractedly, "Indeed, but I didn't need to commune with the ghost of the victim to know that it was poison, the stomach contents alone-"

"Okay, genius," says Watson, "let's go get some dinner, shall we?"  
  
Watson drags Holmes away, as Holmes mutters, "Watson, you are interrupting my chain of thought-"  
  
"And you," Watson hisses, "are seriously disturbing a large number of the Metropolitan police force. They don't want to talk about stomach acid, and they  _definitely_  don't want to talk about how you can call up dead people for a  _chat_."  
  
Holmes looks at him, and Watson is struck for what seems like the millionth time by the innocence in his eyes, as he says, "But you do, don't you, my good doctor?"  
  
 _Your good doctor_ , Watson thinks, says, "Yes, Holmes. You know I do."  
  
Holmes ducks his head, tries not to show weakness that they both know isn't really weakness at all, and Watson says, "So, where did they get the poison from?"  
  
Holmes grins, wide and reckless and sharply beautiful, and begins, "Not from soap, although that was incredibly common in the Victorian era, a notable female serial killer demolished several families, her  _own_ families, that way-"  
  
When Holmes takes Watson's hand in his own, they keep talking uninterrupted, heads inclined close together in the low light of early morning.  
  
  
  
  
Watson may not have been afraid, but it took him a long time to get used to the physicality of Holmes, to all about him that screamed  _wrongwrongwrong_.  
  
"I don't heal," Holmes had said, "and I don't feel. Oh, no, I feel, in the, "how beautiful these daffodils in the sunshine!" way, regardless of appearances, but touch me, and I don't know anything but pressure. I'm not like that old adage, cut me, and I  _don't_  bleed."  
  
"Your stomach," Watson said levelly, forcing his eyes not to drift down to Holmes' chest.  
  
"Indeed," Holmes had said, and smiled that sad smile again, "I told you it would bother you."  
  
"It doesn't," Watson said, and even he was surprised at the conviction in his own voice, "but do you, do you want-"  
  
"To touch you?" Holmes had said, and suddenly that devil may care attitude was back in his vicious grin.  
  
"Oh, Watson. You have  _no_  idea."  
  
  
  
  
"How old are you?" Watson asks, on a rainy night in a dark field somewhere in the Cheshire countryside.  
  
"Twenty-seven," Holmes says, completely matter of fact.  
  
"Piss off," Watson says, "don't make me say it. I wasn't asking about the outside."  
  
Holmes peers through binoculars, shoulders set in a hard line, says, "I know," but he still doesn't answer.  
  
  
  
  
Much, much after their first kiss, Watson lay in his bed, traced the thin lines of the stitches in Holmes' stomach with a careless finger.  
  
"They're ugly," Holmes had said, not self-loathing, just stating what was to him a self-evident truth.  
  
Watson drew his tongue along the thread, didn't need to say  _no_ , but they both heard it anyway.  
  
  
 

It's weeks and weeks until Holmes answers the question Watson asked him. He does that sometimes, restarts a conversation as if it never ended, as if the time had never passed.  
  
Watson sometimes wonders if he'd always been like that, or if that's what happens when you live longer than any man is supposed to. (He's always had his suspicions about the former, anyway.)  
  
"I had a brother," Holmes says, lifting the bow from his violin, pushing his feet into Watson's lap without any warning, "and he had trouble letting go."  
  
"Letting go?" Watson says, keeping his voice light.  
  
"When I died."  
  
"How did you-"  
  
Holmes presses his fingers into Watson's thigh, says, "I fell. A very long way. It broke all of me, but it was my choice and I would make it again in a heartbeat."  
  
"Was it--"  
  
"Suicide? No. There was a man, a very dangerous man, and I needed to, well, take him out of circulation, shall we say. But my brother decided my story was not to end that way."  
  
"Sounds determined, your brother."  
  
"You cannot even begin to imagine, I assure you. He was a powerful man, and he found a way. That's the only thing I've never been able to work out, although it pains me to admit it. How he did it. All this time. I've never known."  
  
Watson half-laughs, says, "I struggle to believe that."  
  
"Oh, do. He could run rings around me, my big brother. So, yes, I died, and then I didn't. Voila."  
  
They sit in silence for a long, stretching moment, until Holmes says, "I shall take pity on you Watson, because I know your biographer's mind needs to know."  
  
"To know what?"  
  
"1867."  
  
"Is that when you were b--"  
  
"Yes," says Holmes, and pushes his head into Watson's shoulder, won't say anything more.  
  
  
  
  
Watson began to write the novels because he couldn't do anything else.  
  
He needed to share Sherlock Holmes with someone, anyone, and so he chose to share him with his adoring public, for whom Sherlock Holmes was a myth, the demon-hunter with the mind like a grenade and the tongue like a knife.  
  
Holmes professed to hate them, secretly loved them, and Lestrade just shook his head and said, "Well, it's not like he's legally alive, or anything. Do what you like, Doctor, although I don't think you should make that ego of his any bigger."  
  
Watson did it anyway, because that's what he was for, after all.  
  
  
  
  
Holmes leaves the photograph out, on top of Watson's computer, and never says a word.  
  
There were two men, one of them obviously Holmes, and the other--  
  
The other was obviously a Holmes, too, there was no mistaking the dark hair, the fine cheekbones, the arrogant curl of the lips. Holmes didn't look really any younger to the Holmes that Watson knew, so that meant--  
  
Scrawled on the back, Watson finds something that takes his breath away.  
  
 _Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, the Diogenes Club, 1887._  
  
They never speak of it, because some things are better left unsaid.  
  
  
  
  
"A bestseller?" Holmes had said, "I am deeply disappointed in the literate public."  
  
"I'm not," Watson said, "and you shouldn't be complaining, it'll keep you in dangerous chemicals and bail money."  
  
 _They love you, of course they do, how can they not_ , he didn't say.  
  
  
  
  
It's February, snow thankfully thawed, when things begin to change.  
  
They sit in front of the television, watch as the world becomes an even stranger and darker place.  
  
"Bastards," Holmes says, " _I'm_  the walking dead. They're stealing my act. They're not much like me, though."  
  
As footage of a woman ripping out a police officer's throat fills the screen, Watson says tightly, "Clearly."  
  
Holmes ruffles Watson's hair affectionately, says, "You ready for another war, then?"  
  
"I think," Watson says, "we might need more normal guns this time."  
  
"It is fortunate, then," Holmes says, slipping down, crawling across the floor, beginning to rip up floorboards, haphazard, "that I have that covered."  
  
Watson stares at the hole in their floor, at the extremely illegal weapons that have apparently been there for quite some time, says, "Fucking  _hell_."  
  
Holmes laughs delightedly, says, "Oh, John. Isn't that what we  _do_?"   
  
 _Never let it be said that Holmes' sense of humour isn't deeply odd_ , Watson thinks, but he laughs, too, anyway.  
  
  
  
  
"I'm going on holiday," Lestrade had said, "try not to end the world while I'm gone."  
  
Holmes had promised nothing, and Watson had hugged him, ignoring Lestrade's shocked intake of breath.  
  
Even this exchange seems funny, in retrospect, after a while, even if Holmes does insist that he's absolutely sure that it wasn't anything  _they_  did, unless it was that grimoire from Austria, but it seems unlikely, because he burnt that thing until it turned to dust.  
  
Watson just rolls his eyes.  
  
  
  
  
They run.  
  
They run and they keep running, and somehow, it's enough.  
  
  
  
  
"Keep calm," Holmes had whispered in his ear, "keep calm and shoot them in the head."  
  
Well. Watson's always been good at following orders. Holmes has always been good at giving them.  
  
They do okay.  
  
  
  
  
"Are you coming?" asks Watson, "Because I refuse to believe that whatever you're doing could possibly be that fascinating."  
  
"You are," Holmes says, "as you so often are, utterly wrong."  
  
Watson rolls his eyes for what feels like the hundredth time that day, and says, "I'm going to go and pick some off so it's easier to get the Jeep through."  
  
Holmes waves his hand, says, "You do that, darling," like he's not even paying attention, but he's never felt more awake in his life, always listening, always on alert, no matter about appearances.  
  
He kneels down, brushes the moss away from the headstone. He hasn't be able to come here as often as he'd like.  
  
He's never contacted him, not ever. There are some things he will never be brave enough to do.  
  
"Thank you, M," he says softly, "for everything. I don't think even you, in your omniscience, could have predicted what you were going to give me."  
  
He pauses, forces out a breath, grits his teeth, whispers, "But I still miss you anyway," and walks away, gun dangling from his hands, to where John is waiting for him.  
  
He doesn't look back.


End file.
